Increasing costs for healthcare are turning into a serious drain on our economy. They directly affect many people who cannot afford needed medical care, and they indirectly affect those who can afford healthcare but need to subsidize the system for others. Surgical care is one of the most expensive areas for many patients—with high costs for specialists, assistants, facilities, and goods such as medical devices. Ongoing care—such as physical and occupational therapy—is another area in which costs are often high for many patients, with repeat visits required over many weeks, months, or even years.
Billing errors and fraud are also potential problems in the healthcare field. Healthcare providers perform many different procedures that need to be billed out, from providing aspirin or an IV, to performing a full scale surgery, and providers are often in a poor position to track and record such procedures (e.g., because they are with the patient, busy performing the procedure rather than at a computer terminal recording it). Providers may also tend to multiple patients before being able to enter billing-related information, and may be interrupted by other small or large emergencies during their work.
Patients may be unable to detect or correct billing errors. They may not be able to keep track of every medication they were given, or every test or other procedure that was performed on them. They may also not understand how items are billed in the medical world. Thus, when they get their bill, they may not know what is right and what is wrong. Also, medical bills can be hard to decipher even for short hospital stays that do not involve much testing. In addition, many of the costs in healthcare occur outside the patient's view or when the patient is not attentive. As a result, errors in a bill, whether unintentional or intentional, may go unnoticed by the patient and by the healthcare providers.